Love Inspired Suspense December 2013 Bundle: Christmas Cover-UpForce of NatureYuletide JeopardyWilderness Peril

by Lynette Eason

  “You and your sister, you are trash, from a family of peasants.” Spittle gleamed on his lips.

  It felt as if she had been slapped. Her father had been a fisherman, her mother a seamstress. Hardworking people who toiled every day of their lives to provide for their girls. And Hector, the man who never had an honest job, would dare to speak of them with such disdain?

  Through the anger that nearly blinded her, she realized Reuben had stepped between them. He was inches from Hector. “Don’t talk to her like that.”

  Hector’s eyes flashed. “She’s…”

  “I don’t care,” Reuben said in a quiet voice that had the current of danger running through it. “You will not speak to her that way,” he repeated.

  Antonia felt the tension ribboning through Reuben’s back, through the set of his muscles, the squaring of his jaw. She felt a flash of gratefulness.

  Hector offered a half smile. “I was right. In spite of everything, you still have feelings for her.”

  Reuben flushed. “I will not tolerate you disrespecting her, or any other woman, in my presence. We weren’t raised that way.”

  Hector looked once more at Antonia and then stepped back. “I’m going up now.” He left.

  Reuben sighed. “I’m sorry about that.”

  She was breathing hard, trying not to cry. Gracie, sweet two-year-old Gracie. How could Mia keep her safe with Hector determined to find them?

  Reuben’s brown eyes were soft, and he put a hand on her forearm. She pulled away.

  “Don’t. We both know you think he’s right.”

  “No.” Reuben shook his head. “He’s not right, and even if he was, he doesn’t get to speak to you like that.”

  She gulped as he stroked a hand over her hair with the lightest touch. “No one will disrespect you around me.” His fingers trailed down her hair, onto her shoulder and dropped away, leaving a trickle of sparks behind. “Ever.”

  She breathed hard, trying to gain some control over her stampeding emotions. Quickly she gripped his hand and then released it.

  He turned away. “We’ll get you out of here as soon as it’s full light.”

  Skin still tingling, she grabbed hold of the threads of common sense. Hector was bad, and supporting him made Reuben bad, too. She found that she had twirled a strand of her black hair tightly around her index finger. Quickly she let it go. “I’ll wait in the bungalow.”

  “You don’t have to. Stay here.”

  She wanted to stay, to sit in the worn cushioned chairs in this place that had once been a charming respite, to put away the horrible memories and remember the precious ones, like the chipped junonia shell that now caught the feeble light of dawn. Instead she turned a bit unsteadily and headed into the storm-charged morning.

  *

  Reuben went through the motions mechanically; downing a glass of orange juice, trying unsuccessfully again to persuade Silvio and Paula to leave the island, compiling a mental list of things to purchase on the mainland when he dropped off Antonia. Nails, more water, extra batteries, and then back to the island to secure the boats as best he could. None of the preparations dispelled the discomfort he felt at his brother’s visit. Trouble was coming from all fronts. He could not protect his brother; Hector would find a way to take care of himself. But he could, at least, deliver Antonia out of the battle zone. She would never understand why he supported Hector. It cut him. She, like everyone else, would forever believe the Sandoval boys guilty of their father’s sins.

  He knew Hector, knew his faults and weaknesses, but he also knew how his brother defended him when they were teens, stood up for him against a crowd of people who believed him guilty of taking advantage of a local girl. The hatred of the community who was all too willing to accept that he’d done it. The sideways looks and sneered remarks of peers who believed the girl’s story. Cops with an eagerness to convict him glittering in their eyes right up to the moment when they decided they had no evidence to hold him. All because his last name was Sandoval. And when the half dozen boys cornered him at his uncle’s orchard and began to beat him, it was his brother who stood there beside him, taking the punishment, knee-deep in the melee until the cops arrived and broke things up.

  That was the real Hector. Wasn’t it?

  “Enough,” Silvio said.

  Reuben jerked from his thoughts to find Silvio pointing at the water jug he was filling to overflowing in the sink. He turned off the tap. “I’m taking her back now.”

  “Good,” Paula said.

  Silvio chided his wife. “She doesn’t deserve that.”

  Paula didn’t answer as she brushed a kiss on Reuben’s cheek. “Hurry back. Don’t want you caught in the storm.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Reuben said. He gestured to Silvio to follow him outside and told him about Garza’s threat. “You should take Paula away.”

  “I’ll tell her, but she won’t budge.”

  Reuben experienced twin pangs of both tenderness and worry. The emotions quickened his pace as he hurried to the Black-Eyed Beauty, his breathing edging up a notch when he saw Antonia waiting there, black hair ribboning around her like wings.

  Gavin joined them and stood uncharacteristically quietly on the dock a few paces behind. He’d have to be blind and deaf not to pick up on the tension between the two of them. He merely whistled to himself and looked at the birds wheeling above the water.

  Hector’s boat was gone, and Reuben felt a surge of relief. His brother was a distraction he could not afford. He marveled at the thick wall of black clouds, massed like soldiers on the horizon. This hurricane would not retreat until Florida had experienced the full weight of its power. There were no leisure craft to be seen out in the open. The water empty of the usual ocean lovers. Normally he relished the early morning quiet, but now it bothered him. He thought about calling Silvio to make sure he’d locked up, but was annoyed to discover he’d left his cell phone at the hotel.

  “Look there,” Gavin said, jerking his chin toward the expanse of sea between Isla and the mainland. Just past a clump of black mangroves, a sixteen-foot skimmer tossed up and down on the waves. His gut tightened. Garza had an arsenal of men and boats. Had he decided to start his campaign of intimidation already?

  “Whose boat is that?” Gavin asked.

  “Not sure.” Reuben sent up a prayer that he would be able to deliver Antonia out of the nasty business. She’d been entangled in his family long enough. Their love was irreparably ruined, but he did not want to see her hurt. He would not allow it.

  He blew out a breath when he realized the boat was anchored against the heaving waves. Ridiculous to be out in such weather, but the captain was certainly not one of Garza’s men poised to pursue Reuben. Not yet, anyway.

  Reuben sucked in a deep breath full of humid air. Exhaling slowly, he tried to summon up a sense of calm as he strode toward the Black-Eyed Beauty. The smell hit him, pungent and foul. Gasoline. Moving closer he could make out the puddles on the bottom of the boat, filming the seats, dampening the wooden boards under his feet.

  “Gas?” Antonia said, around his shoulder.

  The crack of a gun cut through her words. He had time to look up and see the incoming flare as it arced gracefully across the sky, splaying a shower of sparks in its wake. Time stood still, freezing him with terror for one endless second before adrenaline propelled him into action. He turned and shoved Gavin off the dock and into the water.

  “Swim, both of you,” he yelled, grabbing Antonia’s hand and yanking her to the edge of the dock.

  She opened her mouth to scream or shout a question, but there was no time. He pushed her off the dock, her slender body neatly cleaving the water.

  When she surfaced, he yelled, “Swim away from—”

  The boat exploded behind them as the flare ignited the gasoline, fiery splinters spiraling around, painting golden arcs in the chaotic wind.

  FOUR

  Antonia felt bits of wood raining down, knifing into the water around h
er. She could not understand at first what had happened. Hot embers landed on her shoulder, burning through the wet fabric of her shirt. An eerie, orange glow lit Reuben’s face, and she could see lines of grief there, illuminated for a moment by the remnants of the Black-Eyed Beauty that crackled behind her. The sadness there took her by surprise, the naked sorrow now turning to something else before her eyes, something harder, something dangerous.

  She swiveled in the water to get a look at the burning boat, which glowed like a torch floating on the restless sea. Another flare sailed through the sky and ignited the other boat docked there, a smaller motorboat that caught fire with a whoosh.

  Acrid black smoke blossomed around them. Reuben grabbed her wrist and tugged her away, his grip so strong it hurt. He hauled her until they were out of range of the falling debris.

  “What happened?”

  Reuben’s expression was impossible to read in the weak light, but the intensity of his command was not. “No time now. Swim hard. That way.”

  Gavin spat out a mouthful of water. “He’s right. Do it.”

  She struck out in the direction he’d pointed, away from the dock and back toward Isla, headed for the gap in the mangrove fringe that proved the most direct route. Waves crested over her head leaving her breathless. The lightening sky proved a small measure of help, silhouetting the island against a backdrop of steel gray clouds, obscured here and there by the heavy foliage.

  Part of her mind wanted to mull over the loss Reuben had just experienced. She’d been on or around boats all her life. Her father, a fisherman by trade, was on the ocean nearly every day until his death, and she’d been toted along with him from the time she was a toddler. She knew boats like she knew the vibrant colors of an ocean sunrise or the sound of the beach at night when there was no one around but the scuttling crabs. They were more than wood and engines. They were beloved by their owners, cherished, nurtured…and mourned.

  Just swim.

  It took all her strength to fight through the water, and even with every ounce of determination she found herself slowing against the storm-strengthened surf.

  “Hold on to me. I’ll tow us.”

  She turned off the arguments materializing in her brain and clung to the waistband of Reuben’s pants as he charged through the surf. Against her fingers, she felt the muscles of his back working, strong from hours of hard labor in his orange fields and hotel restoration. He’d always been strong. She’d never beat him at arm wrestling, not once besting him on their sprints around the island. She paddled as best she could to help propel them forward.

  When she could feel the water shallowing out around them, she let go and began forging her own way toward the beach. Wind plastered her hair to her face and left her shivering as they slogged out of the surf; Gavin reaching out to help her. She longed to throw herself down on the sand, just for a moment, to allow her lungs to catch up, but Reuben grabbed her cold hand.

  “Come on.”

  He was nearly sprinting, and she marveled that he still had so much stamina after their frantic swim. Something was fueling him with an unnatural energy. Fear? Sorrow? Anger. The realization scared her. She scrambled after him, past the packed sand and through the ripple of ornamental grasses and clustered palms thrashing in the wind. Charging under the stately oaks dripping with Spanish moss and finally across the green lawn, they made it to the graveled path to the hotel veranda. Slamming through the front door, Reuben locked it behind them.

  Silvio stood there with a phone in his hand, mouth gaping and eyes agog.

  His wife ran into the room holding a pair of binoculars. “What happened? We heard an explosion. Silvio was trying to call you.”

  “Someone blew up my boats,” Reuben snarled.

  Antonia had seen Reuben angry before only a few times. Anger was not an emotion to which he succumbed to often, but now rage flickered in his eyes like a wakening giant. Snatching the phone from Silvio, he stabbed in the numbers. “I’m calling the cops. The guy doused the dock in gasoline and fired a flare from out there on a skimmer.”

  Paula’s face went slack with horror. “What?”

  “Who would do that?” Antonia finally managed around her chattering teeth. His eyes locked on hers, but he did not answer.

  “I’d sure like to know the answer to that,” Gavin said.

  A sinking feeling flooded Antonia’s stomach. Hector’s mob connections. Crime swirled around his family like a dark, fetid wind. Reuben must have read her thoughts because his mouth twisted.

  The cold took over her body, leaving her shivering in the Isla Hotel lobby for the second time in as many days, the lazily turning ceiling fans cooling her even more.

  Gavin absently picked up Charley and cradled the cat to his chest while staring at Reuben. “This kind of thing happen to you often, Mr. Sandoval? Pretty dramatic for a guy who grows oranges and runs a hotel on the side.”

  Something glittered in Gavin’s eyes, a calculating look that surprised Antonia. Then again, the kid had a right to be suspicious after nearly being blown up right along with them.

  Reuben paced as he waited, muscles in his clenched jaw rippling. “This is Reuben Sandoval. I need to talk to an officer about an attempted murder. Someone just blew up my boats. No, no one is injured. I am positive it was not an accident.” He paused. “Myself, an employee and…a guest I was ferrying to the mainland.”

  Antonia didn’t know why the word hurt. They were not anything more than that, two people thrown together by chance. She was a guest on his island, an unwanted one.

  Gavin set the cat down and Charley made his way to Antonia, sniffing at the water puddling around her shoes. She reached down to pet him, but the animal avoided her damp fingertips. Instead he sat a safe distance away tucked next to a conch shell on the bottom shelf of a massive bookcase, regarding her with an appraising look. I don’t know what’s going on, either, she wanted to say. Ask your owner.

  Reuben made three dripping orbits around the lobby with Paula following, trying to thrust a towel around his shoulders. “Yes,” he snapped into the phone. “I understand that, but this is urgent. I know there’s a hurricane about to make landfall.” He blew out a breath. “All right.”

  He pocketed the phone. “They’re prepping for the storm. They can’t send an officer out now, but someone will attempt to get here as soon as possible.”

  “That right?” Silvio lifted a bushy eyebrow. “They don’t believe you, do they?”

  “No. Cops are not going to believe anything from a Sandoval.” He kicked at a box sitting on the floor, punching a hole in the cardboard and making Paula jump. “They destroyed my boats.”

  Antonia heard something in his tone that made her think he knew exactly who had done it. Paula interrupted her thoughts by going to the closet and getting down a basket of clothes. “Leftovers from the absentminded guests. Go change. Again.”

  Gavin had already gone upstairs to do the same.

  This time she didn’t bother to protest, squelching meekly into the tiny bathroom connected to the lobby. Avoiding her reflection in the mirror, which was no doubt ghastly, she changed into the faded jeans that were a size too big and the short-sleeved polo shirt in a pastel-pink color that she would never wear under other circumstances. Paula had even managed a man’s navy windbreaker, which extended past her thighs. There was nothing to be done about her sandals except to put them on again. Feeling marginally better, she returned to the lobby.

  She found Paula in the kitchen, putting a kettle on to boil. Reuben and Silvio stood on the wide veranda, even more spacious since Reuben had removed all the quaint rockers, binoculars raised to their eyes.

  “Do you see the skimmer?” she said, staying well back near the white-painted house to avoid the driving rain.

  Reuben did not look at her. “No.”

  Silvio spoke quietly. “Could be he’s headed back to the mainland.”

  “Or could be he’s staying out of open water, hiding out in the lagoon.”
r />   “Dangerous,” Silvio said. “With the storm coming.”

  “He’s got a reason to finish the job,” Reuben said.

  Antonia came closer. “What reason?”

  A quiet voice interrupted. Hector strolled into the room, his face drawn. “His boss told him to convince you. He will carry out his orders, destroying everything until you capitulate.”

  Convince Reuben? She took a step backward, a reflexive action.

  Reuben appeared just as surprised. “I thought you left.”

  “I sent Benny back. I wished to stay, to give you a hand with the hurricane preparations.” He flashed a distracted smile. “Now I see that you need another kind of help.” His smile vanished. “I did not imagine they would act so quickly, so blatantly, believe me. I would have dragged you off this island if I thought…”

  Reuben and Hector locked eyes and Antonia could see that Reuben was struggling with some internal decision.

  She felt lost. Someone blew up Reuben’s boat because their boss ordered them to. She wanted to press, but Reuben turned his back to her and spoke to Silvio. “We have to get her off this island, and Paula, too.”

  “That’s not going to happen now, and you know it as well as I do.” Silvio jutted his chin at the ocean. “Both your boats just went up in flames.”

  “The police…”

  Hector laughed. “The hurricane makes landfall within hours. Police aren’t coming.” His tone was bitter. “Not for a Sandoval. We’re all trapped right here, like it or not.”

  Paula called from the kitchen. “We’ll be fine then. If the cops can’t make it because they’re busy with evacuations, then this crazy man who blew up your boat won’t be able to call for reinforcements, either.”

  “Unless they’re already here,” Reuben said so softly Antonia almost didn’t hear him.

  *

  Reuben shut down his worry long enough to focus on the practical. Hector was helping Silvio board up the windows on the third story. Paula was cooking something and retrieving all the potted plants from the veranda and balconies. Gavin had gone to make sure all the lower-level windows were secure. None of them could be budged from their duties, arsonist or no arsonist, except possibly Gavin, and he had no choice at the moment. That left Antonia to deal with.